If you’ve ever gone on bookstagram or bookish twitters (is there a word for that? Bookter? Twittooks?) you’ve likely come across people participating in read-a-thons.
So for those who may not know, a read-a-thon, as I’ve come to understand it, is when a group of book loving individuals, like myself, read as much as they can in a certain time-span. Usually I seem them as 24 hour read-a-thons, but I’ve also seen some where they last a week. Now, you follow your own path here, reading whatever you’d like (unless your group is specifically dedicating the read-a-thon to a specific genre/author/book series) but the goal is to read as much as you can. You can eat, drink, live your life, whatever you want really.
What’s nice about read-a-thons is that others are doing it with you and you can all talk to and support one another throughout it, making it more fun. Initially, I questioned if this was a reasonable thing to do in the real world since I have a full-time job and as a result have limited free time to devote to 24 hours of reading, but I have done two (one week-long and one 24 hours) and I found that they actually were wildly beneficial to me.
I don’t know about you but I sometimes get into reading slumps where I can’t read a book to save my life, even if I’m wildly interested in it. This was happening to me when I participated in my first read-a-thon which was a week long. I found that although I didn’t devote nearly as much time to reading that week as others did, I was actually able to get out of my reading slump!
I think what helps is that it gave me a reason to read, even if I didn’t necessarily “feel like it” — I made a commitment so I wanted to put forth some effort and once I got through the first little bit, I was back to wanting to read rather than feeling responsibility to read. Having others to to talk to throughout the week about our progress, our annoyances etc. really helped me feel like I had a support system as well!
The 24 hour read-a-thon was nice because it justified taking a day for myself and just relaxing and reading books. I think I have a hard time allowing myself time to just not do work and focus on what I want to do and this helped me justify taking that time for me. I didn’t talk to people as much this time around because I really did just read the entire time, but I was able to finish two books off my TBR and I felt really accomplished after that!
Overall — I find read-a-thons can be helpful for anyone looking to tackle an large TBR stack, get out of a reading slump, connect with friends, or even just take time for themselves!
I wanna hear from you! Have you done any read-a-thons before? What do you like/dislike? Did you incorporate anything fun into them? Comment and let me know!
Rheya Reads 